Cops in Philadelphia say their sickening discovery of a corpse with its heart, liver and other internal organs expertly removed could be connected to a gruesome black-market trade.

Police found the body of a black man in his mid-30s Friday afternoon in an abandoned ghetto row house in north Philadelphia.

Initially, they thought the man – lying face-down – may have been the victim of a drug overdose or died of natural causes.

But when they turned him over for a better look, they were shocked to find his organs had been removed with chilling surgical precision. A police source revealed the man’s ribcage and breastbone had also been stolen by the ghoul.

“There’s a really sick person out there who wants to keep somebody’s internal organs,” said homicide Capt. Charles Bloom. “[Or] is there a market for this?

“Or are they trying to send a message?”

Bloom said dead junkies turn up regularly in the blighted Philly neighborhood, but organ-stealing is rare.

“We thought it was a drug overdose or a homeless person,” Bloom said. “It was a pretty gruesome sight. I’ve seen enough after all the years in this business, but this did it.”

The body had been sliced from the base of the neck to the stomach, and sources told the Philadelphia Daily News that a rope – or something like it – was wrapped around the man’s neck.

Investigators would not describe what instrument may have been used to do the cutting.

The sickening discovery was made by a man foraging for scrap metal who called cops.

When the body was found, the dead man’s face was frozen, and cops believe he had been dead between 24 and 48 hours. However, they were unsure whether he had died at the scene or dumped post-mortem.

They were also unsure whether the monster’s vile “surgery” was conducted in the filthy row house or elsewhere.

Detectives are hoping an autopsy will shed light on whether the man had been murdered or whether they were dealing with abuse of a corpse.

They described the man as black, about 5-foot-7, with a small build and between 30 and 40 years old. He has been tentatively identified.